Tag Archive: lowes

So I went to Lowes last night (notice a re-occurring theme here? It’s both a blessing and a curse that I have a Lowes within 5 miles of my house!), to pick up some lumber to build my stand-up desk.

I could build the whole thing with 5 cuts out of a small piece of plywood, so I grabbed a 4′ x 4′ sheet and off I went. Unfortunately, I only made it to the parking lot because the sheet of plywood wouldn’t fit in my car (I’d fault Ford, but I suppose the Focus wasn’t designed with much lumber-hauling functionality in mind)!

I went back into the store to have them cut the board in half (which, as a bonus, would also save me one cut later), but the saw was broken. The associate brought me to where I found the plywood and showed me that I could pick up two 4′ x 2′ pieces (essentially my first piece cut in half), so I picked these up and headed over to the register.

Now, the two separate pieces were a few dollars more than the one solid piece, but I shouldn’t have to pay extra for the two pieces because the cause of the problem (aside from the board not fitting into my car) was that their saw was broken.

Nevertheless, I didn’t say a word as I was checking out, and as the cashier was processing the return she said “I didn’t charge you any extra, because our saw was broken”.

Here’s why I loved this so much: I used to work in retail and I couldn’t do anything without calling my manager to the register: no discounts, no sales, no nothing! This employee, however, was able to use her judgement and apply a discount at the register. It wasn’t a huge discount (I know that managers are still needed for those), but I love the fact that the company trusts her (and the rest of their employees) enough to allow them the freedom to give small discounts without having to create a whole ordeal and call the manager over.

A Yale research team did a study on monkeys & the concept of money and found, among other things (and please pardon my oversimplification) that the vast majority of the monkeys tested preferred to knowingly get less with a 50% chance of getting extra as a bonus than getting more with a 50% chance of getting that extra taken away.

Even though 50% of the time the monkeys ended up with the same amount, the monkeys preferred a potential bonus instead of a potential loss (and this, of course, is a real-life example of the concept of loss aversion).

This brings me to my picture of the day:

Come on, Lowes!!! What are numbers 3 and 6 of your “Customer Service Comes First” sign?!?!? (And why don’t you have the decency to give your Spanish-speaking customers the respect of using a tape color that matches the background color of their portion of your sign?!?!)

This has to be #1 in the “how to lose (or at least greatly dissatisfy) customers” handbook!

A better move on Lowes’ part would be to take the sign down temporarily and get it printed without numbers 3 and 6, but don’t make such a public display about how there are services that you are not willing to do for your customers!